Typically, the noise coalesced into an easily ignored hum of mingling syllables. Charles moved through life with little mind to the incessant thoughts of others. Loud personalities may’ve startled him on occasion, persistent calls for attention needling him in passing, but, for the most part, he was not forced to entertain the thoughts, worries, or fantasies of those he had no interest in.
Until Erik.
He was late for a guest lecture. Not a complete disaster: his teaching assistant, Hank, would easily have taken over introductions and gotten started in his stead. The underground was overcrowded at 8AM. Charles usually left for the University two hours earlier to avoid that deafening barrage of hundreds of compacted thoughts.
Remember to pick up bananas on the way to... So close... Important clients... Need to pee... Where's my wallet? ...Transfer to Victoria Line next... This guy smells weird... Can't believe he said that... Appointment at 3... Rude... Hot...I wonder if Bill could extend our deadline... Smell... People... Busy... How long? ...Meeting... 'She gasped as he fumbled with her jeans before abandoning the endeavor and yanking her waistband down, wasting no time plunging his fingers'... Gonna be late... Where did I leave...
Charles clicked the volume of his earbuds up a couple notches but the music only added to the cacophony pressing in from all sides. With a sigh, he pulled out his earbuds and rubbed at his temples. He knew what to do when it got to be too much; denying his gift was unproductive. Carefully, he opened his mind to the city and searched for someone familiar, whoever he could find first, maybe Raven or Moira if they were close enough.
But something else arrested his attention. Extending himself beyond the train car was like physically moving through the crowd, only metaphysically, brushing past clusters of minds in order to reach past them. He never picked through people’s memories the way people worry telepaths did— frankly, most people weren’t that interesting— but one mind needled him as he passed.
It was like hitting a wall where there was meant to be a door. Charles paused, opening his eyes and surveying the passengers around him. Using his telepathy might’ve felt like moving through a crowd of people, but the crowd of minds didn’t align with actual crowds of people. Charles couldn’t pinpoint a mind’s location, only that it was nearby, amongst dozens of others. Often, he could look at someone and focus on their particular mind, and the access felt different—almost like he was entering through their eyes rather than bumping into them skin to skin. He could tell this mind was nearby so he physically looked, with his eyes, at the people around him.
The elderly man sitting across from him sipped from a steaming mug. An impression of oolong bloomed on Charles’ tongue and he moved to the next. A smartly dressed woman leaned against the doors scrolls through Instagram on her phone. Charles could feel the buzz of mindless consumption like static fizzing around her mind from where he sat.
He mentally darted around the car, bouncing from mind to mind like human pinball, searching for that peculiar impression. The underground was crowded, though, and he could only see a handful of those around him. Determined, he relaxed his concentration and found that strangely coloured drop in the ocean once more, brushing against the smooth contours of inaccessibility.
He felt the urge to almost rub against it, like a cat nuzzling its owner’s leg.
Most minds were wide. There was a shallowness to their surface and Charles skimmed over the top of them without second thought. He gained a fleeting, subconscious impression of their identities. If he spent more than half a second, he could catch a whiff of their thoughts and desires. It was as mundane as surveying oncoming traffic before crossing the road; on the other side, if he were to be asked the make and model of the car he waited to pass before stepping out, he would be at a loss.
The assertion telepaths were intrusive sneaks, stalkers hiding in sheeps’ clothing, collecting everyone’s deepest, darkest secrets—Charles was very aware of society’s fears. He did his best not to stoke the flames of an already precarious public perception.
But this mind was so strange. People assumed that frantic, speed-of-light spiralling would slice through the drone of background noise most. Contrary to popular assumption, though, fear faded fastest from Charles’ memory. Worry was like the ink writing every thought, unnoticeable and mundane. Everyone was anxious most of the time; everyone thinking about their own lives— their to-do lists, what they should've said, how to get that XYZ that they want— the same self-absorbed urgency, ruled by perceived needs and a state of assumed importance by default. Whereas the other’s spilled all over the place, thinking so loud Charles had to resist cringing as their worries and thoughts accosted him, this mind was contained. It was radio silence, an absence where a shape out to be, a black hole amongst the roaring crowd.
Charles felt it like a well; such little on the surface, containing multitudes beneath. Where the others spread horizontally in easily viewed rows—1 deep and a hundred wide—this mind layered itself, folded itself like origami, taking up a singular unit twelve thousand deep.
Reconciling the metaphysical into physical, almost mathematical terms, was the only way Charles could navigate his own abilities. He had to visualise minds as if they were tangible in order to direct his own mind around them, and he did that then, focusing on this person as if carefully pacing around a statue at an art exhibit.
The mind bristled. To Charles, it was not a physical push, but rather a sudden flare of heat in proximity to the minds’ strongly defined borders, like a blinding intake of breath.
This person felt him.
The only other times people felt Charles’ presence was when Charles deliberately sorted through memories. Which he only ever did by request or order of the government. When he recalled a memory, people usually knew because they’d never experienced a recall induced by anyone other than themselves. He felt their discomfort, surprise, affronted defensiveness, and sometimes straight-up hatred at his ability to hijack their minds so subtly.
Charles searched the train car with his eyes once more, hoping to meet a similarly-hunting pair of eyes in return. He wondered if the person even realised he was there, or if their reaction was subconscious. Were they a fellow telepath, trained to be still while the rest of humanity rushed by? Everybody looked as they were, staring at their cell-phones, reading novels, resting their eyes, and chatting to companions. He caught a sign out the window and jumped up with a start, just managing to dart between the doors as they closed behind him.
He chuckled, shaking his head. He was already late and he almost missed his stop. What would he have done, rushed into the lecture hall a whole hour late with the excuse he got distracted by a fascinating stranger? He moved with the crowd towards his exit but, before he reached the stairs, everything burst apart.
Charles came to consciousness amidst a piercing shriek, a shrill screech of noise felt in his skull as much as heard. Grey dust enfolded his bleary vision, the smoke obscuring the room clouding his mind just as much. He couldn't figure where he was. His hands where grey. Distantly, he registered with dazed confusion how low he was. He was on the rail tracks-- a fact that ought to have been massively concerning. But he couldn't make sense of himself.
The shriek relapsed, giving way to a mental assault of pain and panic. Charles screamed, though he didn't hear his own voice, pressing his palms to his ears like he might prevent the experiences entrance to his mind.
Sudden brightness caused his eyes to open. A train approached, bearing down on him. He was still screaming, crying, writhing in the agony of countless souls. The headlights consumed his vision.
And cut out.
But the pain didn't end. He was on fire, his arm was missing-- WHERE IS ELISABETH?-- he was split open, he was... dead. Every thought entered Charles, consumed him, transformed him into a teeming mass of horrid sensations, of insurmountable grief and terried, inconsolable confusion. Chaos surrounded him physically but the seconds stretched into an eternity inside Charles' mind. Flashes of blood, limbs, young faces, childhood memories flooded his mind. He felt and saw it all.
"HEY!" he heard distantly. "HEY! YOU HAVE TO MOVE!" Charles felt a hand on his shoulder. He tried to focus on the voice. "HEY! CAN YOU MOVE?" He opened his eyes, blinking up at the man crouched in front of him, one arm shaking Charles' shoulder, the other stretched out behind him. The train quivers over his shoulder like a glitching simulation, struggling against an invisible barrier.
What... What happened?
The man blinked above him, telepath registering briefly but lost quickly amongst the flood. Charles saw the explosion replaying from every angle, replaying over and over in hundreds of traumatised minds at once. The same second, like a broken record at defeaning volume, trapping him in a hellish timeloop too powerful to even dream of escaping.
"HEY!" The man tried again. "WE NEED TO MOVE. CAN YOU WALK?"
Charles can feel the strain of holding back the train's momentum vaguely, one of another thousand sensations. Nothing amidst the rest. He shook his head like he might dispel the demons tearing him apart from within.
"FOCUS. ON. ME." The man clasped Charles' cheek with one hand and repeated the command, "C'mon. Focus on me."
Charles felt intention push against his mind, wilful enfolding of his attention, and he registered a familiar coolness, like ocean water the sun couldn’t reach. Distantly, Charles recognised the mind from his train car some time ago— hours, minutes, another universe— and he clasped the man’s arm. Tethered, a flood of information flashed through his mind, a history too fast to digest, but leaving behind the conviction Charles would be alright. He managed to catch glimpses of pain from the man—Erik, his name was Erik Lehnsherr— hundreds of memories of grief, loss, sorrow, all overshadowed by boiling rage, zapped through Charles like lightning and although the man—Erik—didn’t think in words, the memories spelled, you’ll survive because I did.
Erik’s assurance grounded Charles for only a moment before the outside world swelled like a great tidal wave and collapsed over his mind. He must’ve been holding onto Erik’s mind too tightly, as Erik stumbled back like he’d been gut punched, gasping for breath. Erik’s grasp on the train car suspended behind them slipped, and the great machine screeched hideously as it slid dead along the tracks, barrelling onward. Erik barely managed to hoist Charles from it’s path in time. Charles barely registered the movement. He curled on what was left of the platform, clutching his head. He screamed in silent agony. Loose metal lay around him, shards of whatever Erik had animated now discarded.
The last thing Charles registered was Erik crouching over him. The howl of ambulances echoed through thousands of minds, screams, and pain, so much pain, resonating in Charles as his vision faded.
-----
He came to slowly. Charles didn’t wake like most people. Most people woke with their eyes. They relied upon vision more than any other sense to interpret the world around them. But Charles’ strongest sense was his sixth, and so when his mind woke, he never had need for his eyes to orient himself to consciousness.
For the first few moments he didn’t know where he was. His mind was groggy. He could vaguely feel people nearby but they were as indistinct as clouds passing behind buildings; merely the ideas of fluctuating shapes. He willed his eyes to open or his limbs to move but pain accosted him. Light shocked through him. He grunted, which hurt even more, and a sound brought him pause. Clumsily, he lunged for the nearby mind. The presence brought his eyes to a figure sat beside his bed, watching him.
What... Where...?
The man mentally and visibly cringed away from Charles’ question. Charles hardly registered which medium he’d reached out with— mind or mouth— and couldn’t bring himself to care if it made Erik uncomfortable.
Erik, he thought groggily. Erik Lehnsherr.
Erik blinked at him in surprise a few times. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. That’s me,” he said in a voice scratchy from disuse.
Flashes of Erik looming over him in the subway tunnel welled in Charles’ consciousness and Charles must’ve been on some heavy drugs, because Erik cringed as if he saw them too.
“Oxycotin,” Erik answered— did Charles ask that out loud?-- and Charles cringed.
“I—” His voice was a dry croak and he choked on the sound, lost to a fit of burning coughs. Erik brought a cup of water to his lips and he sipped gratefully. The cool water soothed a path down his throat and into his chest and he closed his eyes with relief. “I’m Charles,” he managed. “Charles Xavier.” His voice still sounded like two scraps of sandpaper viciously copulating, but his throat no longer felt like dry tinder ready for a match.
“You can still... talk, um, like that, if it’s easier.”
Charles sent him a mental image of a constipated cat.
Erik’s mouth opened in surprise, Charles’ teasing catching him off guard. His cheeks coloured adorably and he looked away. “I do not look like that,” he grumbled indignantly.
Laughing hurt but Charles chuckled anyway as he struggled to push himself into a sitting position. The pain was a dull pang spread across him like a blanket. Erik sprang up to assist him, disproportionate concern colouring Erik’s mind space. Charles looked at him intently as Erik settled a pillow at his back, prodding with his mind slightly harder than he would’ve otherwise.
Erik’s head was definitely really weird, but Charles was either way too drugged to unpack that or too distracted by the horrifying answers he managed to uncover to notice. He didn't remember dreaming but distress resonated through the constructs of Erik’s mind like a network of overgrown ivy. A fresh echo of Charles’ own mind was on the surface, and Charles saw a projection of his dreams replaying there. A train had been coming towards him and he'd wanted it to hit him. He'd wanted to be put out of his misery. In his drugged sleep, his mind had been unguarded and projecting and Erik had seen this brief welcoming of the end and couldn’t let it go. Charles recoiled, pulling his mind away from Erik’s.
“Oh,” he croaked. After a pause, in which Erik settled back onto the chair, Charles tentatively sidled against Erik’s mind once more. He could tell telepathy unsettled Erik: the confines of his mind whirred in a fluctuating conflux of erected barriers, automatically turning himself into a maze on contact. Charles didn’t push against Erik’s deep red defensiveness, instead offering a door. To Charles, it felt like gently sucking through a straw. Whereas reading others’ minds felt like diving headfirst into a ball pit, inviting a mind into his was like opening a side door into the stream of a vortex.
Erik made a squeamish face as he mentally took Charles offer. He was feeling brain-feelings for the first time— other people’s experiences of Charles’ gifts usually make him laugh, but today he didn’t have it in him to find the humour, not when he was constructing his experience in a translatable way for Erik. If Charles weren’t drugged, he could’ve given Erik a body in his mind-space, let them both roam around and converse in a perceivably audible form, but he was too tired. Instead, he presnted his memory of the Underground to the presence of Erik’s consciousness, careful to impress visuals only. Like watching a horror film. Charles could make Eric live the memory, but he wouldn’t subject that physical pain on his worst enemy.
I don’t want to die, he tried to impress in the darkness of the aftermath. He slowed the onslaught of terror and devastation to a manageable rate and hoped Erik would understand what he’d been experiencing at the time. He got flickers in return from Erik, the horror of his familiarity with Charles’ fleeting suicidal ideation, confusion at the intensity of his concern for Charles, a stranger, and grief over what he, too, experienced yesterday.
But it was hard to keep out the pain. He could still see and hear and feel hundreds of experiences so vividly.
Charles mentally pushed Erik away as a nurse entered the room. Erik reeled in his seat and Charles giggled— he must still be so high— at the nurse’s confusion toward Erik’s strange behaviour. In her head, as she walked in, both he and Erik had been sitting rigidly, staring at each other from across the room, and suddenly Erik jerked back like he’d been shoved by an invisible force, his face twisted like a baby who shat himself. Charles couldn’t stop laughing and it hurt a little bit and he wished he could stop but it was as if his muscles had received the order to laugh and then the record started skipping and he couldn’t do anything but laugh, he couldn’t--
The nurse gently attached some new pouch of liquid leading to the the IV in his arm, and warmth blossomed in Charles. She told him it was good to see him awake but he still needed more rest.
His head grew heavy even as a few more giggles bubbled from his throat. His head lolled in Erik’s direction.
“You were really annoying,” he said to Erik like some grand secret. “She told me so, in her mind.” He didn’t hear Erik’s reply. “Your mind is different,” was the last thing he thought before he returned to the darkness with the feeling of Erik’s mind still lingering on his tongue.
It took a week to get discharged from hospital. Charles only had a mild concussion and sprained wrist by the time he left. Erik had eventually filled him in on the attack too— a single bomb rigged for when the tube began to depart Tufnell Park station— and Charles followed the news for details of the investigation and subsequent swift arrest of the culprit. The world moved on just as swiftly, updates buried by celebrity gossip and political scandals within a few news cycles.
Charles, on the other hand, felt raw. As he walked down the street to the grocers, since he was given leave from the University and has nothing better to do. His mind searched the crowds for sparks of recognition. He hated searching for trauma, it felt unproductive and invasive, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking for other survivors. In a city of millions, with the power to connect to and unite every single mind, he’d never felt more alone.
Everyone still projected their thoughts with no restraint. They worried about such trivial things; didn’t they know at any moment the ground beneath their feet could rupture? Charles continued to hope for a hint of similarity, while also hoping he never found it. The noise made his still-healing head pound, but he couldn’t shut them out completely even if he wanted to— took too much effort.
Luckily for Charles, his apartment was padded from the outside world. Some technology of Hank’s Charles would never understand. At home, he set out the ingredients Erik asked for and laid on the couch to wait for him.
When Erik had explained he was only in town for another week—Charles didn’t ask where he was staying before, having caught from the sprawling minds of various nurses instances of confrontation with Erik, who slept at Charles bedside, refusing to leave until Charles woke-- Charles had immediately invited Erik to stay at his apartment. He insisted, really, and wouldn’t take no for an answer, even when he caught a scrap of Erik’s reservations about close proximity to a telepath. Even when the edges of Erik’s consciousness rippled with deeper reservations Charles couldn’t decipher the maroon nature of.
Erik worked for a non-profit dedicated to assisting homeless mutant youth. Although Erik had both a masters in engineering and architecture, he set aside whatever ambitions he neglected to mention after witnessing the overwhelming poverty amongst the mutant population in L.A when he’d moved there for University. He explained to Charles he'd just finished opening one in Canada when the London staff reached out with some questions about their struggles opening a temporary housing compound in Soho. He’d just gotten into London the day of the tube explosion and was only meant to stay a few days to help smooth out some details.
Obviously the timeline was pushed back. And Erik was a model guest. He insisted on cooking. Charles would be lying to himself if he pretended he hadn’t liked the idea of seeing Erik in his kitchen every morning—he’d been living off cup-o-noodles far too long for a man his age. He also, out of sheer curiosity, needed more time to study Erik’s peculiar mind.
When, a week later, Charles caught a scrap of conversation through the minds of one of Erik’s colleagues hoping Erik would accept their offer, he cornered Erik after their customary dinner (which Charles was already attached to) and pressed until Erik relented.
“I didn’t see the point, I’m not gonna take it,” Erik had said.
“What do you mean? Obviously you’re going to take it. Why wouldn’t you take it?”
“It's just so much work, I’d have to get rid of my Toronto apartment, get someone who can watch Quicksilver,” (Eriks cat), “for a few months at least, not to mention find another apartment.”
“Just stay here,” Charles had replied, hoping his desperation wasn’t too obvious.
And, just like that, Erik was living with him. Well, not ‘just like that’: Charles had to employ every mental technique shy of sheer domination to convince Erik to agree.
He had the spare room anyway, he said. He’d been meaning to start searching for a roommate and if Erik moved in that would take another thing off his plate. He let Erik pay rent but only because he picked up on how much better Erik would feel about the situation. He was just happy Erik agreed.
You see, the thing was Charles, an introvert, craved people more than anything else. His mind had been off since the tube incident and it made being around people insufferable. Even Hank and Moira were jumbles of words tangled in whispers when they’d come by a few days after Charles got released. Raven was easier, having grown up with Charles and understanding how to keep her mind quieter than most people.
But even she was nothing compared to Erik.
Erik was quiet. And it was more than just being a reserved mind, or a private, defensive person. Charles had felt people deliberately attempting to hide and Erik wasn’t one of them (though it became very clear, very quickly Erik’s past was a conversational no-go). Besides, people were never as deceptive as they thought. Charles would simply wait as they mentally worked through their steps of layering thoughts on top of one another, thinking as quickly as possible or repeating a mantra in order to cloud his vision; but Charles could see it all. Their minds were like 3D models he could zoom in, turn, and inspect at will. Charles wasn’t restricted to the location of their attention. Erik, though, could only be engaged with at the border.
Charles often caught instantaneous thoughts as they occurred; a delicious as he tried Charles’ signature mushroom and chives omelette the first morning, a oh, hey, you’re home, what the hell? when Charles burst through the door like his ass was on fire when he was late for that evening’s episode of Real Housewives (people being audibly stupid and he can’t hear their inner monologues? Yes, please). Charles received warm feelings of good-will in the mornings as he quickly discovered Erik did not form words before nine in the morning and until the taste of coffee weighed heavy on his tongue. It was as if Charles could only read Erik’s mind when Erik’s mind was talking to him and not the other way around.
“Is it your powers?” Charles asked him eventually.
“Is what?” Erik was shovelling hash browns into his mouth and reading the morning paper. He paused when Charles didn’t continue, glancing up. He pushed a question-feeling at Charles. When Erik thought at him, it wasn’t like communicating with other telepaths, it was like Erik parted a river for Charles to step into. It was like Erik carved some obstruction out of the way so the desired thought could bubble to the surface for Charles to see.
“Your mind. Can I not read it because of your mutation?”
“You can’t read my mind?” Have I been thinking like this, really loudly this whole time for nothing? Oh my god, what a complete and utter—
“No, I mean, I can. It’s just... different. Really different. Weird.”
Erik’s chewing ceased. Charles could see the wheels turning in his eyes but he couldn’t feel the ideas churning like he should have been able to.
See? He thought at Erik. That right there. He projected an image of Erik across from him, early-morning hair rumpled, loose t-shirt hanging off his tall frame, fork paused mid-air. His brow was creased in thought, mouth pursed into a thin line. It was just Erik. Just Erik, from the outside alone. There was the feeling of his mind’s existence, like a blip on a radar, but nothing more. Charles impressed what he would expect from the moment; maybe colours, images, the linking together of questions forming an interconnected web of consideration as Erik’s mind thought. Yet Charles saw none of that and he flipped the usual experience off like a switch, trying to impress the magnitude of difference. “You’re saying you’re not doing that on purpose?”
Huh, Erik replied. “No. You sure it’s not ‘cause I’m a mutant?”
“That’s what I’m asking.” Charles conveyed an impression of Raven’s entire existence. Raven and her swirling brain patterns like the stitching together of a tapestry from all angles, reweaving endlessly and instantaneously. He thought of Hank, whose thoughts existed in bold lines and sharp angles, a meta-textural mind. Moira’s soft brook-like mind was not different because she was human: every mind was simply different. The mind of one mutant could resemble a certain human’s closer than that of their fellow mutant. Everyone was different. But Erik’s mind was different in a way Charles didn’t realise a mind could be.
“Huh,” Erik said, aloud this time. Charles received mild hints of pride. “Weird. I dunno, guess I’m just built different.” Charles rolled his eyes at Erik’s wolfish grin. Erik went back to his newspaper but, after a few moments, asked, “Does it bother you?”
“What?”
“Not being able to read my mind all the time?”
Charles swallowed. “I... don’t want to read your mind all the time.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“It’s just really weird,” Charles elaborated. “It feels like I can see everything except you. Like, imagine being blinded from only seeing one thing. Everything else you can see and hear and touch— well, not touch but, like, you get what I mean— everything else you can see but this one thing is a... a non-space, a void. It’s just really unsettling. Especially when I can literally ‘see’ for miles.”
“Can you really?”
Charles blushed. He didn’t usually disclose the extent of his powers. “Sometimes,” he answered bashfully.
Erik side-eyed him. Liar, he thought with a smirk.
Just a smidge.
“So it doesn’t bother you then?”
He shrugged. “Not really. To be honest, the weirdness aside, it’s actually comforting to be around someone and not be feeling everything they’re feeling. It’s quite nice, actually, I never thought I’d be able to live with— er, like, cohabitate with anyone without...” He cringed and bit his lip. “It’s just nice.”
Erik’s eyes lit up and Charles caught warmth at his fingertips and a distinct impression of I feel the same from Erik. Curiosity coloured the edges as Erik said aloud, “Wait, so, tell me more about this not-reading-my-mind thing. I still don’t get it. You can hear what I’m thinking, right? I mean, we talk like that sometimes, don’t we?”
“Yeah, it’s just, like,” Charles trailed off searching for a way to explain. His eyes caught on the window and he rose. “C’mere. Look.” He beckoned Erik to the window and directed his gaze to the rush of people bustling down the pavement on either side. “I’m gonna push on your mind a bit, ‘kay? I know you hate it when I do that, don’t roll you’re eyes at me.” He laid a hand on Erik’s forearm to ground himself as he extended his mind to Erik’s, which bristled as it always did when Charles tried to do anything more than shallow communication and, when he had a grip on Erik’s attention, he turned to the streets below. He could see how Erik saw them: people far below. People turned singular, a ‘crowd,’ a faceless entity of movement. He shook his head and, like a transmitter, he showed Erik what he saw.
Minds bloomed like flower petals unfurling into another plane. Memories, sensations, joy, love, despair, grief all mingled around their heads. The crowd became the rushing riverbed beneath shimmering, smoky reds and blues dancing together. A myriad of vibrant colours overtook the physical view and Charles distantly felt Erik’s hand cover his.
Charles could feel Erik’s reaction clearer than he could feel his own body; the experience of one struck by a beautiful sunset.
A thought from Erik hit Charles like a truck. It wasn’t an outside thought, a communication in words, it was one of the deeper ones, a thought not even experienced by the thinker in language. They came from the parts of the mind Charles couldn’t see in Erik like he could with anyone else. After so many years, Charles perceived these kinds of thoughts in words, translating instantaneously: He’s given me words for colours I’ve never seen, Erik had thought. Charles blinked. He didn’t usually catch anything other than Erik’s outside thoughts, but this one was intense enough for Charles to hear and he hadn’t half a clue what it meant.
He shook his head, keeping his attention on projecting.
“How do you not just stare out this window all day long?” Erik murmured.
“’Cause usually it sounds like this,” Charles replied, turning his attention from casting the street below to pushing a plethora of memories at Erik. He brought up the sound of the Underground screeching along the tracks, with the chattering of people physically on top, and then added the SCREAM of inner thoughts to the mix. Erik cringed, his fingers flexing over Charles’ where Charles’ hand remained on his forearm.
That must be insufferable. Erik’s eyes crinkled at the corners the way they always did when he was hurting for someone else.
Sometimes, he admitted, then shrugged. But what am I to do?
He pulled the sounds of the city away from Erik and from himself, peeling his attention away like a thin film off Erik’s consciousness. Erik made a squeamish face again at the sensation of his mind being hurtled, suctioned, funnelled away from the experience of being everywhere.
“It feels weird,” Erik said aloud. “My body feels so small now. Does it feel like that all the time?”
Charles shrugged. He’d heard from people removing his mind from theirs after something like that felt as if he’d removed an organ they’d never felt before but could then notice the absence of.
He could probably spend his whole life trying to explain to Erik exactly how it felt to be a telepath, but even he was ill-equipped for the task, as he’d always been one. Over the course of his years he’d gathered a pretty good impression of how other people experienced the world, but attempting to sum up the thousands of lives he’s flitted across into one simple binary would insult the beauty of all their individual shades and shapes. Charles’ telepathy did set him apart, but (as cliché as it was) he tried to view mind reading as merely another kind of identity, only one of the many things that make him unique.
Erik shook out his limbs. “Oh my god, it does. My existence is so small. Holy shit. How did my life ever feel profound to me when you’re living like this all the time?”
Charles stood, gathering both their dirty plates for washing. “Don’t worry,” he said as he passed Erik, patting him consoling on the shoulder, “The post-telepathic existential crisis is totally normal.”
“Ha! I bet. And what am I meant to do now?” he asked himself. “Just go to work like you didn’t just shatter my whole worldview?”
“Oh, quit being a baby and go to work, you’re gonna be late.”
“Jesus. What are we?” Erik asked. His voice pulled off a light, teasing tone but Charles saw the slight flare of uneasy maroon beneath them.
He wanted to whisper into the space, “I wonder the same thing sometimes,” but instead he chuckled alongside Erik and made a joke about packing him lunches and doing his laundry too.
Before Charles knew it, they had been living together for nearly two months.
And he was pretty sure there was nobody else in the world he could love the way he loved Erik Lehnsherr.